Our Journey Awaits

Let’s rekindle our passion for personal growth by rewriting our bucket list

Jean Edelman: Great to be with you this week. This week I want to talk about our bucket list or what I’m saying, our bucket list. We all have this list of dreams and ideals and travels and things that we wish to accomplish in our life. But you know what? Life changes. We change as the decades roll on. And why are we holding on to something that could be 20 to 30 years old?

You know what? It creates frustration and possibly a sense of failure. These places that we want to visit. What if our health has changed? Or what if our economic situation has changed? Having something like this list that will never be accomplished. I don’t think it’s very healthy, and I think it’s okay to replace it with something else. As our life evolves, our priorities change and our goals shift. We need the freedom to reinvent, refresh, remove items from this list, and it’s okay to give ourselves permission to chuck it and start over.

This list can change yearly. Daily. Whatever feels right to us. The beauty of life is that it’s fluid and we change every day. We get to start over and so should our list. We don’t want to have regrets in our life. We don’t want to have should haves or could haves or would haves.

But how do we accomplish this? Well, I think we do that by setting realistic goals, and we do this by stopping and taking time to make decisions instead of being indulgent. And as I’ve talked many times, we tune in. We tune in to what’s important, and we trust the intuition and the path will open before us.

And so our action item is to look at all the lists in our life. Our chore list, our list of what we want to accomplish…Where do we want to go? What do we want to do? Look at it all. What can stay? What have we done? What can go? What new items would we like to add? These lists should be fluid and they shouldn’t be an anchor to us.

And so short and sweet this week, my word of the week is List.

The L is for Light, weightless and free. And that is what we will feel when we take these anchors off. It is like staring at that chore list. It creates stress to be reminded of the things that we haven’t gotten done. So let’s give ourselves permission to just chuck it all and start over and have a great day. Because it is a new day.

The I is for Indulge, to give in to a desire to gratify, to revel in something. These lists should be gratifying. Is it selfish to indulge? Well, yeah, but it’s okay because we’ve worked hard and whatever we’re indulging in, well, that brings us joy. So what? It’s our life, and we only have so many moments in it. So indulgence; it’s allowed.

The S is for Serene, calm and untroubled. And when we’re in alignment with what is meaningful to us, there’s tremendous calm. You know it, you’ve experienced it, and if you haven’t, I recommend you really tune in and get aligned. There’s a great inner knowing. And if we created our list in our 20s and 30s, and now we’re in our 50s and 60s and 70s, there’s so many reasons why this list is outdated, and there are many reasons why it’s something that we don’t want to do anymore. And it’s okay to say that it doesn’t bring me pleasure anymore. It doesn’t bring me joy. Let’s start over. And you know what? All will be well.

The T is to Thrive, to grow strong and healthy and to blossom. And every day is a gift. We can make these small changes in our self-care. We can make these small changes in our life choices. These changes keep us vibrant and young, and our later years can be our best years because we have better sense of who we are and what we want from life.

And so it’s a wonderful opportunity to review all of these lists and change it. Don’t be afraid. Spend time looking at our life. Where are the anchors? Cut them free so we can sail on to what makes us truly happy. Have a wonderful week everyone and look at those lists.